Fortunately not for me, having raced again last night I despair at the state of events and running in Britain.  Not to take away from the hard work that the guys who put some of these races on, like the Normans, they do a great effort, but we are seriously lacking behind.  Granted we do mass participation well and the Nova Events are good, and Cainey looks after guys really well, so no complaints there, they are slick and professional but if you look at pretty good quality races like Alsager 5 or Dave Normans, Manchester 10, something is in my opinion is just not quite working.  Again, no slight on the boys, they work massively hard, and dare not think how bad things would be without their input, but they must be working to massive constraints, probably to do with costs, lack of good sponsors and just the red tape that comes with closing roads, health and safety in Britain and all the other stuff that only seems to be an issue in our country.

Case in point.  All of our races seem to start in out of the way schools, or leisure centres.  The gun goes and the field goes off out into the countryside for most of the race before eventually coming back last minute to finish once again out of the way.  What hope is there of attracting any supporters or sponsors. You see the guys for about 30 seconds, great!  

Last night I raced in another 'little' road race in a little Swiss Town.  Firstly the start is right in the centre, the local hotel gives over their facilities and they have a loop around the town.  For us it was supposed to be 8k (although the Garmin read 8.39, shall talk in race report) but we had 8 laps of the town, the competition was good and the atmosphere was great.  There was a good few thousand people there, which is great to see.  What they do is have events all day for the locals and the kids, including scooter races for the kids.  The event is well supported by all the local businesses, and also big companies like UBS and Swiss Post, major banks, phones companies etc etc. yet we are in a small town, maybe that is just the mentally of the British and the companies are not interested, in which case the events are going to suffer.  The other thing is the prize money.  Winning Manchester 10k couple of years ago I got about 50 quid and then for the team prize for 1st team we got a 10 quid voucher.  To run in Britain by the time you have paid your hotel, travel race fee's you are way out of pocket.  I think that weekend cost me a good 100 pounds  Yesterday they paid my travel and all expenses, including entry.  The field was really strong and I came 14th, yet still picked up about 80 quid in money.  Prizes went down to 20th.  At least 2000 for 1st place.  The other good thing they do is have a series for the Swiss Athletes.  Not only can they pick up the main prize money, but they also get Swiss only Prize money, so it doesn't matter that there were 20 odd Africans, it brings the best out, so the competition increased.  They then have 4 races in the series, scoring points for the overall money prize at the end.  They all want to run.  I know we have a similar thing on the track in the UK (The challenge) or whatever it is called, but it is a joke.  5 best performances over the year count for your points, but every event is up against every other, so you get the ridiculous situation where throwers or sprinters always win because they can pretty much compete every weekend both Sat and Sun through out the summer and pick their best 5.  What chance has a 5k or 10k guy got against that, you can only do two or three really quality ones though the year.  We are a joke in my opinion the way we look after our guys, and there is no sign that it is going to change any time soon!!

Sp8y